Levantines of the Ottoman World: Communities, Identities, and Cultures

The book begins with an extensive and comprehensive literature review by one of the editors, Eric Blackthorne-O'Barr, “From Compradors to Cosmopolitans: Historiographic Currents in Contemporary Levantine Studies.” The author introduces the basic questions in Levantine studies: Who Levantines were in the past, who they are now, and who they are likely to be. The writer continues by describing the past and present of Levantine studies, as well as the prevalent paradigms and concepts. According to the author, “total histories,” world systems, cosmopolitanisms, convivialities, globalities, borderlands, crossed histories, entanglements, and encounters are central concepts to Levantine studies. On the other hand, as the author explains, there have been two major paradigms in Eastern Mediterranean History and Levantine studies, and there were “world system analyses and cosmopolitanism.” Stating that the analytical fragility of these paradigms has emerged in recent years, the author emphasizes that in the world system theory which was the dominant paradigm in Mediterranean and Levantine studies from the 1970s to the 1990s, Ottoman Levantines were considered the most important comprador “class” that enabled the non-capitalist Ottoman economy to penetrate the capitalist European economy